


the ravell’d sleave of care

by ardentintoxication



Series: Hurt/Comfort Bingo [2012] [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, Exhaustion, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Steve Feels, the avengers are a cuddly bunch and I can ship them if I want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 06:23:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/594480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardentintoxication/pseuds/ardentintoxication
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which none of the Avengers have any sense of limits. For the hc-bingo prompt "exhaustion."</p>
            </blockquote>





	the ravell’d sleave of care

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reverent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reverent/gifts).



> Not exactly inspired by her brilliant fic "[Forty Winks in Forty Nights](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8293419/1/Forty-Winks-in-Forty-Nights)," nor is it a remix, but I still think that this fic should go to her.

Part of being a sniper is learning to ignore your body. Your body is just what moves you from target to target, and your mind is stronger than it. Your mind calls the shots, and if your mind says that you don't need something, you simply don't take it, even if every muscle screams for it. If you're on a stakeout, if you need to wait for the precise moment and know that moment might not come for hours, you stay there, sometimes not even breathing too much if that will attract attention, until the moment comes to strike. So Clint doesn't really sleep if he doesn't need to. Unfortunately, his definition of "needing" is different from most people's - Clint won't sleep until his vision is so blurry he can't make the shot true.

Clint sleeps for days after a mission if he needs to, somewhere high and safe.

* * *

Natasha sleeps with one eye open. Her nightmares are usually red (with blood, with fire, with endless minus signs) and so she doesn't sleep so much as drift in and out of consciousness. She wakes in short bursts, and if she finds herself unable to go back to sleep she will take out one of the three guns under her pillow, unload it, take it apart, clean it, and put it back together again, until she feels almost as clean, almost as whole.

In truly bad situations she will make herself a cup of tea. The first time JARVIS commented on the hour and her heart rate she nearly shot the ceiling, but now, if she cannot shake the taste of blood in her mouth, she will put down her guns, make herself some black tea with raspberry jam, and talk to JARVIS about useless things until she sleeps again.

* * *

Bruce never seems tired. He sleeps for nine hours every night, because sleeplessness makes control that much harder.

After changing, Bruce will sleep for hours. With every change, his muscles stretch within his skin and his bones grate against his organs, and even though it's less painful when he's not fighting it, his mind and body need time to recover. He'll change back into himself in a heap of stone and splinters and broken glass, and the next time he opens his eyes, they will be brown. If he's lucky, his team will find him fairly quickly with a change of clothes or a shock blanket and carry him home, and he'll wake up in his own bed. If he's not, if the Other Guy wanders off before he changes back, he'll be unconscious for hours and wake up somewhere unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

He's been getting lucky a lot lately.

* * *

Thor's armor is actually very hot. It is strong, but it is heavy, and it often weighs him down despite his strength and the magic beaten into it at its forging. Moreover he is used to a mild sun and long winters. He is unused to the place the Midgardians call "Florida," and finds it so hot and humid that each breath is hard-won.

He is the sort of man who will not complain, not even as sweat drips from his hair.

He feels the Man of Iron's arms catch him as he falls senseless from the sky, and he wonders if perhaps, in this instance, complaint would have been wise.

Phil, son of Coul, later tells him that they had to bathe his body in water and ice, that he was pale and weak and his skin was damp. Thor remembers none of this. Thor dreamt only of Jotunheim.

* * *

Tony doesn't sleep. He flat-out refuses to. Tony deprives himself of sleep because it's fun, because he forgets, because he's working on his next great invention and _he could totally live off of coffee, coffee is awesome_. If he does sleep, it's in small catnaps, usually around three in the morning, before he gets up and powers through several more hours on caffeine and willpower alone.

Steve comes down to the lab around five-thirty - his morning, Tony's crash time.

"I've read your file, you know," he says. "So I know about the palladium."

Tony's back tenses, relaxes. "Yeah, and? It's not like I'm dying anymore."

"You still act like it."

Tony goes back to his tinkering, which right now is the unholy love child of a toaster and x-ray goggles. "I don't-"

"You do." Steve sighs. "Get some sleep." He turns to leave. "For more than an hour, please?"

* * *

Steve's sleep is wracked with nightmares. Sometimes he dreams of explosions, a factory in flames, a body on an operating table. He dreams of snow. He dreams of ice. Sometimes it's not a nightmare. Sometimes he dreams of a Saturday night and a dance where he doesn't have two left feet, children building snowmen.

If he cries, he does it in the privacy of his own room without anyone to hear him.

He's wearing holes in the industrial-strength punching bag Tony designed for him when Clint wanders in, offers to spar.

"Don't act like I don't know what's going on," says Clint between blows. "You're not sleeping, and I know why. We all do."

"I'm not looking for symp-" Steve's protest is cut off by a well-placed elbow to the jaw.

"You're not supposed to take care of us all the time," says Clint. "I can at least do this."

* * *

Movie night is Tony's idea. It's a Thursday, it's December, they're back from a mission that's left them all bleeding and frostbitten and tired as fuck, so Tony flops on the giant plush couch in the living room and asks JARVIS to put on something that has enough explosions to put him to sleep. JARVIS, because he simultaneously has Tony's sense of humor and Pepper's ability to remember dates, begins to play _Die Hard_.

Clint wanders in right around the Christmas party scene, lets out a whoop, and disappears back into the elevator. He emerges five minutes later sans bow with Natasha and Thor trailing behind him. "Can't watch action movies by yourself, Stark," he says. "That's boring as shit."

They're arguing good-naturedly over their spots on the couch when Steve and Bruce walk in, Bruce looking unsure of his welcome.

"Come, friends," says Thor. "We have yet to properly determine seating arrangements and may have to begin the film afresh, for those of us unfamiliar with this tale."

At first they're in an orderly position on the couch, thighs and upper arms being the only things that touch, but by the time Hans Gruber has taken Holly hostage, Thor is asleep, his head on Natasha's shoulder.

Tony queues up the other three in the franchise, plus the three original _Star Wars_ films, and slumps on top of Clint. Steve, Natasha thinks hazily, looks so much younger when he's sleeping, like the twenty-five-year-old he actually is. It's her last thought before her head is pillowed by Steve's chest. Bruce is the last to fall asleep, his breaths calm and even and relaxed.

Steve's breath quickens in his sleep right near the end of _The Empire Strikes Back_. Natasha wakes up immediately, recognizing that sound, knowing that she herself has made it and that it was always easier when Clint was there to wake her up. "Steve," she whispers. "Steve, are you okay?" Steve makes a muffled noise, mumbles some words too soft and slurred for her to hear. She doesn't move, not wanting to spook him. "Steve?"

Clint blinks, moves seamlessly from sleep to wakefulness. Natasha, her head still and unmoving on Steve's chest, makes a face at him, motions at Steve with her eyes. Clint nods, slowly, nudges Tony and Bruce on either side, scoots carefully away from Steve. Bruce, who's on the end of the couch, gets up, gets Thor off of Natasha. Natasha is the last to get up, lifting her head from Steve's chest carefully and then moving out of range.

"Steve," says Clint, his voice, deepened by sleep, going deeper still in order to carry authority. "Wake up." Steve frowns, makes a noise in the back of his throat. "Wake up, soldier."

Steve goes still, his eyes flying open.

"It was a dream, Cap," says Tony. "Just a dream. You're fine."

Steve's face flits from confusion to fear to pain to realization. He sits up slowly, gets to his feet, starts towards the elevator.

"Nuh-uh," says Clint, grabbing his shoulder. Steve turns wildly, flails, throws a punch. It goes over his head almost too easily. "Come on, Cap, back to the couch."

Steve looks like he's going to panic. "I'm not- I don't want-"

"Is your way working?" asks Tony. He meets Steve's eyes. "I mean, if it is, you can walk away right now. But I have a feeling that not sleeping and then working yourself into exhaustion? Not working."

"I-"

Bruce walks over to Steve, puts a hand at the small of his back, steers him towards the couch.

Steve spends the night in a tangle of limbs. Someone's finger is tracing patterns on the back of his hand, someone's arm is wrapped around his waist. People are smoothing the hair back from his forehead, rubbing circles into his back and shoulders.

For the first time in a long while, Steve doesn't dream at all.


End file.
